39% of Brits will multi-screen during sporting events and 58% will share information about entertainment content

Over half (60 per cent) of US and UK citizens are likely to use multiple devices to do something related to the content they are watching, research from Edelman has found.

The research of 3,000 consumers in the UK, US and China also discovered that half of respondents are likely to use an app or website to interact with the content if it was designed by the creator (US: 56 per cent; UK: 46 per cent; China: 81 per cent).

Figures for apps not designed by the creator of the show receive a slightly smaller usage – 52 per cent in the US and 44 per cent in the UK.

“Multi-screen behaviours are not new, but it is interesting that consumers are far more willing to engage with an app or some form of entertaining content regardless of who created it,” said Jon Hargreaves, managing director of technology, EMEA, Edelman.

“Discussions, analysis, content creation and other forms of sharing used to be relegated to superfans. Today, it’s ubiquitous.”

The study found that consumers share entertainment content primarily to express opinions (58 per cent in the UK), and that US and UK consumers are five times more likely than those in China to share in an effort to warn others not to waste time or money on content that is not entertaining (US: 22 per cent; UK: 21 per cent; China: four per cent).

“We are seeing that consumers want to engage more than ever with entertainment content regardless of the source and are less likely to negatively impact poor content than they are to positively impact compelling content. This gives brands the license to explore how they can participate in creative ways,” concluded Becker.

Multi-screen usage is most prominent for moments usually seen as “live” events; such as sports (US: 47 per cent; UK: 39 per cent; China: 41 per cent), entertainment events (US: 41 per cent; UK: 32 per cent; China: 49 per cent) and national crisis (US: 36 per cent; UK: 33 per cent; China: 39 per cent).

Amongst those countries surveyed by Edelman, the UK is the only market where the mobile phone is the least popular entertainment device (eight per cent), while the TV is the most popular (32 per cent).